Barack Obama is secretly pro-Gadaffi - or he's a *****.

[DaShi]

Actually, the article he refers to appears in the Seattle Times. And if you read the by line it actually appeared in the New York Times.
I'll cite it again:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...6_libya31.html

Then just cite that. Unless you need third rate analysts to think for you.

[Fake Boris]

How can one have free will if God's will be done?

Look up the Four Graces theory.

[Zevico]

Sound familiar?

“I am afraid of the Islamic groups. On the front lines there are a lot of them, they are jihadists, dangerous, militant in their beliefs and they want to rule. The Islamists say they made this revolution. They didn’t. We made it, these young men made it.”

“Afraid of the Islamic groups?” Is that Islamophobia? No it is Islamist-opobia, from a Muslim rebel fighter in Libya.

A reporter describes one unit of the rebels, typical of many or most:

“Most of the men were bearded – a regular if not infallible sign of Islamist tendencies – and many wore the more reliable indicator of being followers of [revolutionary Islamism], the beard worn with no moustache.”
...

Back to Libya: Already rifts are opening between rebel fighters and rebel politicians. This is all going to unravel big-time. Will the Obama Administration be held accountable by the mass media for going into this war with no good intelligence and against the will of the U.S. military and Defense Department? The lack of losses of American lives will make Libya inevitably a less noisy domestic issue but in terms of strategic result it Is likely to be far more damaging than Iraq.

Meanwhile, pro-Qadhafi tribes are refusing to surrender. Will NATO bomb them into submission to the TNC?

And as a “former” al-Qaida guy takes command of the rebel military forces in Tripoli, in Benghazi the other main city, another Islamist military commander is calling on the Transitional National Council to resign. Ismail al-Salabi, commander of the February 17 Brigade with more than 3000 soldiers, attacked “secularist” forces and basically says the Islamists did all the fighting.

In Libya as in Egypt and elsewhere, the Obama Administration is playing with forces it doesn’t understand...[.]

http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE7810I820110905?sp=true

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE78308520110904?sp=true

http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/09/05/1959/

[DaShi]

Norway’s challenge
By JPOST EDITORAL
07/24/2011 22:02

Europe’s fringe right-wing extremists present a real danger to society. But Oslo’s devastating tragedy should not be allowed to be manipulated by those who would cover up the abject failure of multiculturalism.

The cold-blooded calculation of the Norway tragedy boggles the mind. For over an hour, Anders Behring Breivik, 32, dressed as a police officer and armed with a rifle and a hand gun, prowled Utoeya, a tiny forested holiday island a few dozen kilometers from Oslo, calmly massacring teenagers.

The youngsters had been attending the annual summer camp for the youth wing of Norway’s ruling Labor party.

With no one armed to confront Breivik, escape from the island by water was the only avenue to safety.

When he finally was forced to put down his weapons by a police team that reportedly took 40 minutes to respond, at least 86 were dead and many more were wounded.

Just hours before Breivik, a former member of a populist anti-immigration party who wrote blogs attacking multiculturalism and Islam, had detonated a bomb in Oslo’s government district that killed seven.

The attacks, which targeted a government known for its embrace of multiculturalist policies, are being billed as the worst incident of bloodshed on Norwegian soil since World War II.

As Israelis, a people that is sadly all too familiar with the horrors of indiscriminate, murderous terrorism, our hearts go out with empathy to the Norwegian people, who perhaps more than any other nation symbolize the unswerving – and sometimes naïve – pursuit of peace.

Oslo is the namesake of one of the most ambitious – and misguided – attempts by Israel, under the mediation of the Norwegians, to reach a peace accord with our Palestinian neighbors.

Norway’s capital is where the Nobel Peace Prize is presented annually. And though Norway has troops in Afghanistan to bolster the allied forces there, the basically peaceful nature of Norwegians goes a long way to explaining the utter shock that has gripped the nation in the wake of the tragedy and the blatant incongruity of the conspicuous deployment of security forces in city centers to safeguard citizens.

Now along with their dogged pursuit of peace, the Norwegians are also coming to grips with the reality of evil in their midst. It would be wrongheaded, however, to allow the fact that this terrible tragedy was perpetrated by a right-wing extremist to detract attention from the underlying problems faced not only by Norway, but by many Western European nations.

Undoubtedly, there will be those – particularly on the Left – who will extrapolate out from Breivik’s horrific act that the real danger facing contemporary Europe is rightwing extremism and that criticism of multiculturalism is nothing more than so much Islamophobia.

While it is still too early to determine definitively Breivik’s precise motives, it could very well be that the attack was more pernicious – and more widespread – than the isolated act of a lunatic. Perhaps Brievik’s inexcusable act of vicious terror should serve not only as a warning that there may be more elements on the extreme Right willing to use violence to further their goals, but also as an opportunity to seriously reevaluate policies for immigrant integration in Norway and elsewhere. While there is absolutely no justification for the sort of heinous act perpetrated this weekend in Norway, discontent with multiculturalism’s failure must not be delegitimatized or mistakenly portrayed as an opinion held by only the most extremist elements of the Right.

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel have both recently lamented the “failure of multiculturalism” in their respective countries.

Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel Prize laureate for welfare economics from India, has noted how terribly impractical it is to believe that the coexistence of an array of cultures in close proximity will lead to peace. Without a shared cultural foundation, no meaningful communication among diverse groups is possible, Sen has argued.

Norway, a country so oriented toward promoting peace, where the Muslim population is forecast to increase from 3 percent to 6.5% of the population by 2030, should heed Sen’s incisive analysis.

The challenge for Norway in particular and for Europe as a whole, where the Muslim population is expected to account for 8% of the population by 2030 according to a Pew Research Center, is to strike the right balance. Fostering an open society untainted by xenophobia or racism should go hand in hand with protection of unique European culture and values.

Europe’s fringe right-wing extremists present a real danger to society. But Oslo’s devastating tragedy should not be allowed to be manipulated by those who would cover up the abject failure of multiculturalism.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=230788

[Zevico]

Or put in a sentence, the contention of the above quoted editorial is

how terribly impractical it is to believe that the coexistence of an array of cultures in close proximity will lead to peace. Without a shared cultural foundation, no meaningful communication among diverse groups is possible..[.]

What does that contention have to do with the price of fish in China?
(or, in non-Australian speak, what does that have to do with Libya?).

[C0ckney]

Kashmiri women find a spiritual space of their own

Although women can pray on the grounds of other holy spots in Srinagar, at this shrine they aren't sidelined


Nafeesa Syeed
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 September 2011 12.30 BST
Article history

A Kashmiri Muslim woman prays outside the shrine of Sufi saint Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani during Ramadan in Srinagar. Photograph: Fayaz Kabli/Reuters
At the shrine of Bibi Baria in Kralpora, a few miles outside of Indian Kashmir's capital of Srinagar, men are barred from entering the tomb of the 14th-century saint. It's a rare chance for Muslim women here to engage in a spiritual space that is all their own. It also feels far removed from unrelenting political tensions in the region that have included occasional strikes and protests this summer.

In downtown Srinagar stands a shrine dedicated to Baria's father-in-law Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani, a Persian saint who locals credit with spreading the Sufi-oriented Islam that took hold in the valley of Kashmir. (He's buried in Tajikistan.) Women are allowed to pray outside the sanctuary, but if they try to step inside they are immediately reprimanded.

Here, however, the opposite holds true. Men are permitted in the tiled courtyard of Baria's shrine, but Zoona Malik, an elderly voluntary caretaker, shoos them away if they want to enter. In the past, Malik says, men who went inside became blind.

Atop the brown-brick shrine sits the pagoda-like layered roof and pointed pillar characteristic of Kashmiri architecture. Devotees lower their heads to the steps at the entrance, and some then kiss the ground.

The wrinkly and bespectacled Malik, who doesn't know her exact age but is a long-time visitor to the shrine, says women often come to ask from God – through the saint – with help conceiving a child or curing an illness.

"I come here to serve her," Malik says of the saint.

In addition to the well-maintained tomb, there are two large structures the religious organisations responsible for the complex have built exclusively as women's prayer halls.

At midday in early August, in the first week of Ramadan, about 10 women line up in a row for the congregational prayer service. They follow the imam, or prayer leader, whose voice is carried through a loudspeaker from an adjacent mosque, which is separated from the Baria compound by a brick wall. The setup runs counter to most mosques in south Asia that usually do not have accommodations for women or even allow them to enter the worship site.

Although women can pray on the grounds of some other holy spots and mosques in Srinagar, here women aren't sidelined to the periphery, but rather act like they own the place.

There are at least a few other shrines scattered in the valley where ladies are buried. The tradition of having a female religious guide also is not foreign to Kashmir, where some living women pirs, who act as spiritual advisers to individual disciples, still exist.

Inside Bibi Baria's resting place, women sit barefoot on green carpets, raising their hands and crying their woes and wishes, with the refrain, "Ay maeni khudaya!" (Oh, my Lord!) to punctuate their orations. Dozens of multi-coloured threads and ribbons are tied to the door handle, representing the prayers they hope are answered.

If they attain what they seek, then they will have to return, unknot the amulet and offer thanks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/sep/06/kashmir-srinagar-shrine

[DaShi]

Or put in a sentence, the contention of the above quoted editorial is

how terribly impractical it is to believe that the coexistence of an array of cultures in close proximity will lead to peace. Without a shared cultural foundation, no meaningful communication among diverse groups is possible..[.]

What does that contention have to do with the price of fish in China?
(or, in non-Australian speak, what does that have to do with Libya?).

Just an example of poor analysis.